Dead or Alive 4
GameSpot adds final impressions as Dead or Alive 4 heads to stores
While most of the staff at GameSpot are taking the entire week off for the holidays, that hasn't kept the big dog, Greg Kasavin, from hammering on a rare retail-ready copy of Dead or Alive 4. In their final hands-on impressions, GameSpot gave props to the upgraded graphics, fluid animation, "fantastic stages", and the tweaked reversals system. The article details the acheievments the game features, including an insane "100 successive wins in survival mode" acheivment. Here's a bit on the online component:
The action's been fast and smooth online, even when playing against opponents across the globe. Sometimes there's noticeable lag when watching other players competing, but the gameplay's noticeably smoother whenever it's your turn to fight. As with any quality fighting game, matches against human opponents tend to be much more exciting than matches against the computer, though for what it's worth, even at the normal difficulty setting, DOA4's artificial intelligence puts up a pretty fierce fight.
GameSpot also spills some details on the female Halo character, Spartan-458. "By far her best-looking move has her shoving one of those blue-glowing plasma grenades into the opponent's stomach and then kicking the poor fool to the turf just before the grenade goes off."
Dead or Alive 4 is sounding like it will fulfill everyone's expectations and live up to it's hype. Let's hope that for everyone's sake that the game takes off in Japan as Sony needs to feel some heat from the Xbox 360 on their own turf in order for them to take some risks with the PlayStation 3, as competition will benefit everyone in the long run. DoA 4 is scheduled to be in stores tomorrow here in the US.
Dead or Alive 4 Final Hands-On [GameSpot]
Is Dead or Alive 4 Microsoft's patron saint in Japan?
Dead or Alive 4, the savior to Microsoft' woes in Japan, is scheduled to be released this week to throngs of eager and willing Japanese gamers. What does Team Ninja and Itagaki-san have in store for his fans and will they buy an Xbox 360 just for his lastest creation? GamePro certainly thinks so by giving the game a perfect 5 out of 5 in its next magazine.
IGN actually flew to Tecmo to play DoA4 for two straight days and put up a pretty comprehensive preview.
"At first glance, Dead or Alive 4 is similar or even the same as Dead or Alive 3, but in many respects, it's deeper and more challenging and all in very subtle ways. What do I mean exactly? First, there are more moves per character. You'll find in the game's excellent training mode a helpful and deep sparring mode that enables you to see which moves are executed, but a new tracking system displays visual bars detailing the height of each attack as well. You also can set up the opponent to perform a single or a combo attack to practice specific moves against them.
Could Microsoft's fortunes in Japan take a reversal from DoA4? It looks like Itagaki-san has the best shot at that honor this week.
IGN: Dead or Alive Preview [IGN]
Dead or Alive 4 to come to Xbox 360's rescue in Japan
Everyone knows by now that the original Xbox was virtually ignored by the Japanese market, selling well under a million console in that country. Now that Microsoft has learned from their mistakes by securing Xbox 360 exclusive games from popular and well-known Japanese developers, it appears that the Xbox 360 may have a fighting chance this go-around.
After an underwhelming initial launch in Japan, interest in the Xbox 360 seems to be picking up from a faint heartbeat to a marathon runner's pulse all because of Tomonobu Itagaki-san's Dead or Alive 4. Kisoks with DoA4 demos have begun to show up on the streets of Akihabara stores such as Softmap and in Shinjuku at Sakuraya.
According to Akibablog, the Japanese are swarming the once ignored Xbox 360 and the fate of Microsoft's console seems to be looking a bit brighter.
Check out our Dead or Alive 4 Screenshot Gallery from E3 2005.
